Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 174, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 July 1915 — DIED LIKE HEROES [ARTICLE]

DIED LIKE HEROES

Two Companies Hold Position Five Days Without Relief. Only Handful of Wrecks Left of Assaulting Party With Mission to Capture Chapel—They Captured It How two companies of French infantry took a chapel defended by German trenches and held their narrow strip of captured ground for five days •nder a continual fire from German artillery is related in a letter published In the Figaro of recent date. The letter was written by the officer commanding the party, who was one of the handful who remained when they were at last relieved. The appalling gruesomeness of modern warfare is told in thrilling phrases in this recital of a heroic act. Parts of the story have been elided by the French censor, but enough is left to give a graphic description. It is as follows. “There was much agitation upon the plateau. The order had been given to my major to take the chapel at all costs. My company had the honor of being designated as the attacking company, and I am sent to reconnoiter the point of departure. “The chasseurs who man the trenches from which we are to leave look at us with interest, because we are going to give the final blow, and because everyone is sure that the chapel has been mined and that the storming company will be blown up with it

“1 give my last orders, then the whistle signal and we start off on the run. For two hundred yards, a great distance in an attack of this kind, we run through shell holes at points deep as a man's height. We take three trenches that are not heavily defended. But by the time we arrive at the chapel half the company is down behind us, for we made the trip in the cross Are of three machine guns.

“My sub lieutenant, a cashier of the Bank of France in times of peace, but a lion on the battlefield, at the head of ten men. Jumps into the little trench that surrounds the chapel and drives out the German sections. We have taken the chapel, but it has been a hard task; then my lieutenant signals to Captain X’s company Without an instant's hesitation he leads his company behind mine, through the captured trenches. He Joins me and Is killed just as he shakes my hand. 1 take command of his company as well as mine, and throughout the night a savage struggle takes place. “The positions we occupy are in the form of a spoon, the captured trenches form the handle and the chapel the large end. Through the trenches ammunition and food are sent to us. as we are being attacked on three sides. “The next day, seeing that they could not drive us out by assaults and not having been able to blow us up. for the precaution had been taken to cut all electric wires which the shell explosions revealed, the Germans began bombarding. All their artillery in that neighborhood was concentrated upon the small space we held, and 1 humbly pray to God that I may never again find myself in the midst of such a belL

“Huge shells burst among the living and the dead uninterruptedly; we breathed only a thick and nauseous vapor. Everything was burning, everything was whistling all about us. The reinforcements that were sent in to me melted away and I was obliged ' to send again and again for more men to add to the handful of heroes whom 1 have the honor to command. “We could no longer get supplies, and for more than twenty-four hours we had to go without food or drink. “What a sight! When, both day and night, hands and feet slip ceaselessly upon unnamable things which once were human bodies; when of these things one has before one the thickness of four men, one realizes how small one really is in the scheme of things, and it restores religious ideas to the most skeptical. For five days that continued, and for five days my colonel, who was watching the bombardment of the chapel, kept saying to his staff officers; 'How can you expect a company to hold out in that bell? It is not possible!’

“But hold we did! We held until the moment when a huge twenty-one centimeter shell struck three yards away from me, tearing everything about me to a horrible mess and burying me with five other soldiers. We dragged ourselves out, and finding that no one of ua was wounded we took off our kepis and on our knees we thanked the Blessed Virgin for having saved us. "Shortly afterward we were relieved. And when 1 descended that slope to the plateau with the handful of men left from what had once been two full companies we were all crying from fatigue and shattered nerves. “Some of us, with eyes sunk into our heads and contorted mouths, were chattering our teeth, without being able to stop. With our clothiDg torn and covered from head to foot with blood and brains we were horrible objects to see. But the chapel was ours!”